


Take in the Stray

by grydo2life



Series: Brother Mine [2]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU, Clint has brothers, Crossover, Gen, I broke canon, Prequel, those brothers are also secret agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grydo2life/pseuds/grydo2life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will comes home to find a strange girl in their living room. Clint has been picking up strays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take in the Stray

**Author's Note:**

> Prequel to [My Family is Just Right for Me](http://archiveofourown.org/works/441577), and is totally dedicated to everyone who enabled/encouraged me with their comments/kudos. This is not the backstory I was talking about in that fic; that particular monster is currently on the backburner pending massive revisions, whoops. 
> 
> **Warnings:** Brief indication of past underage dub-con, but neither Clint nor Will were involved. Pretty blatant hint of violence against a teenager, but the teenager is Natasha, so it can be assumed she kicked their ass in retaliation.
> 
> Enjoy!

She was in the living room when Will got home. He almost missed her, actually, because she wasn’t on the couch or recliner, but curled up in the far corner, knees to her chest and one of Clint’s service weapons held loosely in her small hands. 

Everything about her was small, actually; tiny and fragile looking, enough so that the shirt she was wearing – one of Clint’s old, beat-up band shirts – wouldn’t even sit properly on her shoulders. Her hair was red and curly, wet like she’d just come out of the shower, her skin was pale, and every detail about her face was completely overshadowed by the dark purple bruise on her left eye and the butterfly stitches along her brow.

He stopped in the doorway and took a moment just to look at her. Her eyes darted over him in turn, rapid and sharp, and he’d seen that look before enough times to know that she was doing a threat assessment in her head.

That was… wrong. A girl that young shouldn’t know how to do that. 

Her attention finally settled on his face, and Will could see the brief flicker of confusion across her features before suspicion took over. Her fingers tightened on the gun.

Will retreated and went to find Clint.

* * *

He found him in the kitchen.

“There’s a girl in our living room.” Will said, watching as Clint searched the cabinets for something to make for dinner. 

“Yes, there is.”

“There’s a girl in our living room and she has one of your guns.”

That gave Clint a moment of pause. Then he shook his head, a small quirk to his lips, and said to himself, “Good girl.”

“ _Clint._ ” 

Clint stopped moving, finally, and turned to look at Will properly. Will winced. Clint had _that_ look on his face; the one he always wore when he wanted something so badly but knew the world was too shitty a place to let him keep it. 

Will _hated_ that look.

“Clint,” he repeated, softer this time. “Why is there a girl in our living room with one of your guns?”

Clint looked away, his lips pursed. He was weighing the pros and cons, Will knew, deciding on the safest answer. Finally, he sighed and his shoulders slumped, just a bit. “She didn’t have anywhere else to go, and SHIELD… wasn’t working.”

Will thought of the black eye he’d spotted, the long cut above her eyebrow. He wondered how many others like them she was hiding under Clint’s shirt. “I’m not going to like this, am I?” Clint shrugged, but from the stiffness of it alone, Will knew he was right. He sighed. “What do I need to know?”

“Her name is Natasha.” Clint said. “She’s sixteen, her English is awful, she can kill a man with a paperclip faster than I can with a gun, and she will probably try to seduce you, but she doesn’t know any better, so be nice when you reject her.”

Will took a moment to process that. “Okay.” He said finally. And then, because he knew Clint better than anyone else on the planet, “Now what _aren’t_ you telling me?”

Clint flinched and pointedly looked away from Will, and oh yes, he was _definitely_ not going to like this. 

“Clint.”

“She’s the Black Widow.”

If Will had been drinking anything at that moment, he probably would have spit it back out. He knew who the Black Widow was, of course. You’d have to deaf, blind, and dumb to have not heard of her in their line of work. He tried to connect what he knew of the infamous Russian assassin with the tiny girl in their living room. He couldn’t make the two images work. “She’s… You can’t be serious. She can’t…”

“SHIELD sent me to kill her.” Clint explained quickly. He looked at Will with his eyebrows drawn together and his lips turned down, his expression such a heart wrenching cross between sheepish and fearful that Will couldn’t stop himself from pressing a hand against his shoulder in support. “I couldn’t do it. She’s… she’s just a kid.”

“Jesus, Clint.”

Clint pulled away from him and then braced himself against the kitchen counter. The entire line of his body was stiff and tense. “She never had a chance, Will. They took her when she practically a baby and made her...” He shook his head. “Nobody ever gave her a chance. So I…”

“So you did.”

Clint nodded. Will ran a hand down his face and tried to think. There were so many ways that this could go wrong, so many ways it _would_ go wrong, and his mind was unhelpfully supplying him with all kinds of statistics and information that he really, really did not need at that moment. There was absolutely no way this wasn’t going to end in disaster, and Clint _had_ to realize—

There was a noise. Both Clint and Will twisted to get a look at the doorway. 

The girl was there, Natasha, still looking so tiny with Clint’s shirt falling off one shoulder and nearly brushing her lower thighs. She had the gun still, but it was being held at her side in a loose grip. She watched them both with a hard look, eyes narrow as they swung from Clint to Will and then back again. Will wondered how much of their conversation she’d overheard, how much she’d picked up from their body language, whether she understood any of it. 

Looking at her now, he thought he could see what Clint must have seen.

“I… I must…” she said, voice hesitant, the unmistakable lilt of a Russian accent hanging on the words. Her brow furrowed as she searched for the right words. “I… I go?”

Clint inhaled sharply and looked at Will. He was looking for permission, Will realized. Or maybe just acceptance; something to indicate how he should answer. He wouldn’t let her stay if Will didn’t want her there, no matter how badly he wanted to. The choice was Will’s. 

Will took another look at Natasha, taking in the bruises and stitches. He looked at Clint, who was trying very hard to hide how invested he really was in this.

Then he sighed and sagged in defeat.

“ _Nyet._ ” He said to Natasha, feeling weary. “No, you can stay.” To Clint, who was beaming at him with startled delight, he said, “This is a terrible idea. I hope you realize that.”

“You worry too much.” Clint retorted. He was grinning now, wide and delighted. 

Will laughed, and if it was slightly hysterical sounding, well. No one was there to call him on it. “If she kills us both in our sleep, it’s on you.” He told Clint, only half joking. 

“Will,” Clint said, and when Will turned to look at him, he gave his older twin a look that was pure gratitude and affection. “Thank you.”

Will nodded. On impulse, reached out and ruffled Clint’s hair. Clint squawked indignantly, but before he could retaliate, Will retreated with a laugh. He passed Natasha on his way out, and she watched him with a look of curiosity that Will was pretty certain was real. Feeling brave, he chanced a small smile at her. She didn’t return it, but for just an instant, Will thought he saw the slightest flicker of something unguarded on her face.

He wasn’t sure why, but somehow, that made him feel just a little bit better. He left them both in the kitchen, the soft strains of a Russian conversation following in his wake.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from an Unsane song that doesn't actually have anything to do with this fic; it just worked.
> 
>  **A Note About Ages:** For the purposes of this 'verse, I'm using the actors' ages as a reference point. That means Natasha is about 13 years younger than Clint and Will. That means Clint and Will are about 29 here. For anyone curious.


End file.
